


No Easy Ever After

by SpraceJunkie



Category: Renegades - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Gen, Simon is such a dad, god i'm so terrified for supernova, so take some preemptive fixit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 12:12:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18969055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpraceJunkie/pseuds/SpraceJunkie
Summary: He should be mad.He should be so mad. He shouldn’t feel any sympathy for her. She’d almost killed his son, she’d tried to overthrow the entire system they’d worked so hard to build, she’d broken his other son’s heart, she’d lied to and tricked all of them for her own purposes.And yet, no matter how many times he ran through all those reasons, Simon couldn’t bring himself to the same boiling anger he’d seen in everyone else.She was so small.She’d never seemed so small before.





	No Easy Ever After

By all accounts, Simon should have been fuming right now.

He should have been so angry he was seeing red, unable to think straight, unable to sit still, capital M mad.

Instead, it felt like he was the only person in the city who wasn't.

Maybe that was why he was here.

Everyone else had gone home, either to cool off or because they’d been at HQ for pretty much three weeks straight and needed to be anywhere else.

And Simon was still sitting in the observation room, chin in his hands, staring through the two-way mirror at the tiny figure who looked so lost sitting at the interrogation table.

He should be mad.

He should be so mad. He shouldn’t feel any sympathy for her. She’d almost killed his son, she’d tried to overthrow the entire system they’d worked so hard to build, she’d broken his other son’s heart, she’d lied to and tricked all of them for her own purposes.

And yet, no matter how many times he ran through all those reasons, Simon couldn’t bring himself to the same boiling anger he’d seen in everyone else.

She was so small.

She’d never seemed so small before.

Nova McLain had shown up at trials and taken down one of the Renegades’ most formidable prodigies with a confetti canon and a paper banner. She’d walked like she was on top of the world, ever confident and never letting her small physical size stop her from doing anything somebody four times her size could do. She’d never seemed small, even though she was.

Right now, she seemed small. Lost in a small room at a big table, her head down in her arms. Simon couldn’t tell if she was crying or resting or simply too beaten down to hold her head up tall.

The door was locked, and she’d been completely disarmed. Even so, Simon kept expecting her to stand up and start trying to escape.

But she didn’t.

Nova McLain...no, Nova Artino, the niece of Gatlon’s worst villain, looked like she’d given up every last shred of fight and hope she’d had.

She made a pathetic figure, hunched over the table the way she was.

She didn’t look like a villain, she looked like a sad, scared little girl sitting at a table alone.

He shouldn’t go in there. She was smart. For all he knew, she knew him well enough to play the pity game and as soon as he opened the door she’d knock him out and run.

But he didn’t think so.

She’d turned herself in before the fight was even over. She’d been sitting at the table for three days, and she’d barely talked the whole time.

Not like she was resisting interrogation, but like she didn’t have the energy to give more than one-word answers. Her eyes had been red like she was either trying not to cry or had cried a lot when they weren’t looking.

And when they’d finally left her alone yesterday, when the fight was finally over and things had quieted down, she’d put her head down and hadn’t moved since.

It was late. Simon was tired. He didn’t have his emotions under control. That was why he felt so sorry for her and why he wanted to bring her water and maybe give her a hug.

He should be mad.

He should be so mad.

Maybe if he kept telling himself that, it would work.

One day, his lack of control over his emotions would be his downfall.

Maybe today would be that day.

How was he supposed to look at this pathetic little girl and not feel sorry for her?

She at least needed some water.

She didn’t look up when Simon opened the door.

“Miss...Artino?”

It still felt weird to say that.

Alec Artino’s niece. An Anarchist. A villain.

“I have water for you.” Simon put the bottle down next to her and sat down across from her. “You should drink some.”

“I’m fine,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse.

“No, you’re not. Drink something.”

Slowly, she picked her head up off the table and reached for the bottle, avoiding eye contact.

“Thank you.”

“Do you want something to eat?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Nova studied her hands silently, and Simon sat just as quietly.

He’d learned some pretty good parenting tricks over the years. Adrian had never been an especially difficult kid, but he’d had his moments, and it hadn’t taken Simon very long to learn that sometimes the best way to get him to talk about it was to not say anything first and just let him talk in his own time.

So that’s what he was hoping would happen with Nova. That she’d realize he wasn’t here to interrogate her but to listen to what she wanted to say.

“I didn’t do it,” Nova whispered after at least five minutes more of silence.

“What?” Whatever Simon was expecting, a denial wasn’t it.

“I didn’t...when...when Max...I-” Her voice broke, and she dropped her head back down onto her arms, shoulders shaking.

That should have finally made him angry. Some of their best Renegades had seen her throw the pike that had come so close to killing his son.

But it still didn’t.

He’d seen a lot of villains, and he’d never seen one cry over something they’d done. Not like this anyway.

“What do you mean, Nova?”

“I just wanted the helmet.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and lifted her head again, this time forcing herself to make eye contact. “I broke in to steal the helmet and I used the pike to do it but nobody was supposed to be there and nobody was supposed to get hurt especially not Max. Aftershock...Aftershock tried to stop me with an earthquake and it brought the quarantine down. Max held himself up and made himself invisible but then he fell. He tried to stop me and when I got the helmet back he snuck up behind me to grab it. Genissa...she threw it at me and I dodged it and it hit him and I promise it wasn’t me.”

Nobody else had told that version of the story. According to Frostbite’s entire team, Nightmare had had the pike and the helmet and had turned to throw it at Max to distract them. Genissa had bravely sacrificed her powers to help him.

Max hadn’t woken up yet to corroborate, but they’d had no reason to doubt that story. Max had been nothing more than collateral damage to Nightmare and the Anarchists. Why would they have doubted the story?

“Why wouldn’t they tell us that if that was true?”

“Have you met Genissa Clark?” Nova smiled but there was nothing behind it. “She’d never admit she wasn’t willing to help Max after her powers saved him. I had to knock her out to get her close to him. All she cared about was the helmet.”

“And you wanted to save him.”

“He saved himself. Told me to pull the pike out so he could freeze it over and I knew he had to have more of her powers than he already did.” Nova took another deep breath and looked back down at her hands. “Everything else people think I did, I did. But I never hurt Max and I never would.”

“Why would we believe you when you lied about everything else?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly, roughly wiping her face with her hands. “I just...need somebody to know. That it wasn’t me.”

Stars, she looked so small. Like she was about to sink into her chair and disappear forever.

“Why didn’t you run?”

“Because you’re right.” She looked up at him again. “I spent my entire life running from one thing or another. My powers are a way to run from nightmares. And I was wrong. I blamed everything on the Renegades and it wasn’t your fault. All you ever wanted was a better world and I don’t agree with everything you do, but the things that happened to me weren’t your fault. If I had run, I’d never be able to stop. I’d have to run for the rest of my life and...and I want to be done running.”

“So you let us take you in.”

“I have a chance with you,” Nova said, her voice sounding steadier than it had. “You can neutralize me. Lock me up. But I’m done running. You know who I am and what I’ve done and you’ll treat me like a person.”

Again, Simon knew he should be feeling something other than sympathy right now.

Maybe it was the world he’d grown up in, he reasoned. Maybe it was that he knew what it was like to feel like he was constantly on the run, to feel like the entire world was after him and he could never rest for a second.

But for whatever reason, sympathy was pretty much the only thing he was feeling for the girl sitting in front of him. She looked so small and so earnest and so much like a kid, so different from the swagger Nightmare had had and the confidence Nova McLain had so easily shown.

She looked like she needed a hug.

Comic books and superhero movies made this part look so easy.

The good guys won the battle, saved the world, and the bad guys got locked up and given when they deserved.

They never showed a bad guy being a young girl who’d lost so much and had been fighting for something she believed in. They never showed somebody so small sitting in a chair crying over a boy they shouldn’t have cared about. Never got across that the bad guys could do good things or sit in one of these chairs looking so much like all they wanted was a second chance.

Simon’s fatherly instincts went against the things he thought he knew about being a hero.

He had a feeling being a dad was more important right now than being a hero.

As soon as he wrapped his arms around Nova’s tiny frame, he realized how potentially stupid it was. She could so easily knock him out there and then, leave him to be found in the morning. Maybe even escape, once nobody was watching her.

But she didn’t.

She started crying again, almost instantly, big, shaking sobs, and collapsed into Simon’s arms like she’d never be able to support her own weight again. Simon adjusted his hug, holding her tightly and letting her cry.

That’s what she needed right now, more than anything.

Somebody to hold her and let her know that maybe it was possible to move on from the past.

The world had done it before, surely a few people could do it again.

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhhh Simon is a dad and I love him. Nova just needs a hug and some perspective on the rest of the world because this poor girl only knows one thing.
> 
> Please leave a comment if you want to make my day! Also come hang out on Tumblr if you wanna see me losing my shit over another somewhat obscure book series, my URL just changed to @graybeard-halt !


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